


A Reunion of Sorts

by mittamoo



Series: In The Flesh au [1]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: ITF AU, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Other, Violence, not actually that sad!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 23:56:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14319882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mittamoo/pseuds/mittamoo
Summary: He’s taken to going over to Paddy’s so he can take Clyde for walks, it’s just something that helps him feel close to Aaron again, spending time with the dog that Aaron had loved far more than most people. It’s weird but it helps he thinks spending time with Clyde makes everything hurt a little less for him. Adam longs for a second chance to save him.





	A Reunion of Sorts

**Author's Note:**

> wow two fics no one asked for in a relatively small time span what a miracle!

It feels like one of the most surreal moments of Adam’s life that night when the doctors come out into the hall and tell them all that Aaron had died. He doesn’t remember being driven home, but he does remember waiting to wake up or for Aaron to text him and tell him he’s a twat. But it never happens Adam doesn’t wake up because it isn’t a dream and Aaron never texts because Aaron is dead. Aaron is dead. It feels incomprehensible that Aaron could die not when he was so _there_ the other day. This is the kind of thing that Adam hears about but he never thought that it was something that could happen to him.

For the first couple of days after leaving the hospital, he barely leaves his bed, his mum, dad and even his sister come in and talk to him but he doesn’t want to talk to them. He doesn’t know how to explain what _my best friend is dead and I wasn’t fast enough to save him_ feels like. It still feels like Aaron is going to turn up any moment. Adam can’t help but think this is all his fault, maybe if he’d tried harder or done something, anything different that Aaron would be just fine. If he was better the Dingles wouldn’t be arranging a funeral right now.

 A kind of hush seems to have fallen over the village. A death like this is a jarring one, particularly in a small village with somebody who was so young. What Adam can’t stand are the things people say about it. Said quietly with shaking heads and hushed tones. _‘Nobody could have seen this coming’_ He can’t stand phrases like that, it feels like a platitude at best and a lie at worst.

They could have seen it coming, anyone could have. Aaron had been hurtling towards this for the longest time and no one had noticed. Instead they’d brushed him off, maybe they’d all thought someone else would deal with it. Maybe no one had even considered that he’d needed help at all. No matter what everyone had thought, they’d failed him. Especially Adam.

When the day of the funeral comes, Adam doesn’t want to go. He goes anyway. Dressed in a suit he can’t help but think that Aaron would hate. He doesn’t cry during the service it all seems so foreign to the Aaron he knew that he can almost pretend that it is somebody else’s funeral.  Surprisingly Adam doesn’t actually cry until almost a week after they’d put him in the ground.

They’ve finally put the gravestone up and there’s a part of Adam that never wants to see it but his mum reckons that he needs to see Aaron so that he can say goodbye properly. He doesn’t want to say goodbye. He goes anyway. The gravestone has finally been put up his eyes drift down to the epitaph. ‘ _Sleep on now, and take your rest –Matthew 25:21’_ Despite himself he can’t help but snort Aaron would’ve hated having a bible quote to represent him, he’d hated all that stuff. In a way it’s fitting, Aaron had looked so peaceful when he’d seen him- almost the most content Adam had ever seen him.  Maybe it was, after all this is what he’d wanted. It was the first time he’d ever seen a dead body, he doesn’t want to see one again. He doesn’t end up saying goodbye but he does cry until he has nothing left. It feels like release.

****

The rising was hard on everyone, things like grief fell to the wayside of survival, it forced most of the village to move on quickly and leave Aaron forgotten in the past, Eventually things started to calm down and things became safer again but the in the stillness that they hadn’t had for nearly two years allows the grief to creep back in. He knows that it never went away for Chas or for Paddy but for him it had seemed to have taken a backseat to making sure his family makes it through the day. Perhaps that made him a bad friend, he doesn’t know.

Recently, He’s taken to going over to Paddy’s so he can take Clyde for walks, it’s just something that helps him feel close to Aaron again, spending time with the dog that Aaron had loved far more than most people. It’s weird but it helps he thinks spending time with Clyde makes everything hurt a little less for him in the same way keeping Aaron’s room preserved helps Paddy. The Village have been understanding of Chas’ grief but less so of Paddy’s. After all, he thinks people forget that Paddy had lost a son too.

It might be safer now but it’s still not a good idea to trek the streets alone at night, so at dusk he ends his walk with Clyde and heads back to the farm, fingers itching for the old hunting rifle he hadn’t though he’d need until he’d let time get away with him. To compensate for how exposed he felt, he moved as quickly as possible, after all rott- untreated PDS sufferers were slow.

He’s up at dawn the next morning; the joys of being a farm boy. It’s his turn to do the first rounds of the farm, they take turns, him, mum, dad, and Holly. Rifle in hand he sets off to do his rounds, a prayer on his lips that this morning will be an uneventful one.

For the most part, his rounds had been uneventful, boring even. He’d expected it to stay that way as he approached the last barn he had to check. The door was open though, Adam’s grip tightens on the rifle, it’s never a good sign, but it could mean nothing, he hopes it does. He hates this part, killing someone, because they were people once too.

Adam’s never that lucky, as he approaches he can smell it before he can see it, the smell of blood over the smell of decay, of a body that hadn’t been washed in years. Then he sees the figure, hunched over the opened up carcass of a sheep, _at least it wasn’t a person._ He can see what looks like a young man digging its fingers into the carcass, its movements sluggish and slow, Adam can’t help but wonder with a pang of pity when the thing last ate. No matter what it’s done like this, starving to death is a cruel fate.

The thing hasn’t seen him yet, so he readies his rifle, he’ll give it a quick kill, it’s the right thing to do. For the creature and everyone in the village. But then it turns its head and- _god._ It’s Aaron. It’s Aaron, eighteen year-old Aaron, with blood and gore smeared across his face but still looking remarkably, painfully young. And Adam Freezes. He should shoot him, he know he should, it’d be a mercy kill and he knows it. His hands shake. He can’t do this not again.

Images of advertisements for a treatment centre springs to his mind, promising cash for anyone that’ll bring one in so they can be treated, cured. He could have his best mate back. He spots something in the corner of his eye, there was only one choice to be made now. He turns the rifle in his hands and swings as hard as he can. He registers Aaron hitting the ground with a dull thud before lunging for the length of chain he’d spotted.

Adam is thankful that the hit had stunned Adam but he imagines even without the hit he doesn’t imagine Aaron would have been able to put up much of a fight, his movement jerky and weaker than he’d anticipated. He really must’ve been starving. He makes quick work of it looping the chain around his arms and throat, securing it tightly before pulling him to his feet. He’s not surprised when teeth snap in the air, aiming to take a chunk out of his throat, if someone had chained him up he’d probably do the same and he’d never been as volatile as Aaron.

“Hey, hey lad you’re-“he pauses, does Aaron even understand what he’s saying like this “You’re just a bit poorly, yeah? But it’s okay because I’m going to take you to the clinic and it’s going to be fine, you hear me?”

He can feel the tears burning his eyes, He never thought he’d get this, to see Aaron again, even though its Jarring to see Aaron as just a boy when he himself had grown and matured the past few years, he’s never been more grateful to have been given his mate back. The walk to the clinic takes hours, Aaron is not a fast mover anymore and they can’t exactly take the quad. Mid-afternoon he’s able to stroll out of the double door with two hundred quid cash closed in his fist and a list of games to buy. He and Aaron have two years’ worth to catch up on after all and Adam looks forward to winning.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! I'd really love to know what you thought!


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